This game can be summed up in two major points:
Kevin Millwood – Kevin was fantastic. By far his best outing of the season. He went eight innings, giving up just 2 earned runs on 5 hits, four strikeouts, and no walks. It was almost a buried performance given the #2 major point of this game, plus the strikeout barrage that Anaheim starter Ervin Santana threw at us. But Millwood was great. It’s seriously hard to try and find fault with the line. You know that bit about sometimes performance gets buried in the stats? Not this time – his line was great. Can’t argue with it. Kevin had a nice streak of 13 retired Angels in a row at one point.
Brad Wilkkkkerson – Say what you will (strikeout!) about Brad, but wow did he deliver tonight. He’s become known as the strikeout king, hence my recent spelling of his name in my updates, but it was a night he won’t forget. Brad had three home runs (after his first at bat was a strikeout). The first home run was a no doubter, and the second looked good, but went into the wedgie. That one was probably helped by it’s location. The third one was two rows into right center. Was a six RBI game for Wilkkkkerson, who accounted for six of the 8 runs we got. One was an sac fly by Frank Catalanotto. Right now I can’t recall where the eighth came from. But this was really about Brad. He was on fire, and couple it with his three home run game from yesterday, and he’s gotten pretty hot here.
The other story (at least early on) was Ervin Santana. His line wasn’t great (5.1IP, 7H, 2BB), but the biggest stat was his 11 strikeouts. He struck out five in a row at one point, and for the early part of the game it looked like we were dead in the water; we couldn’t do anything. The fourth started off quite wierdly when Marlon Byrd reached first on a strikeout. After a hit and a sacrifice, Wilkerson turned the game around on the first of his three home runs. From that point on, Santana didn’t seem like the same pitcher; he seemed rattled to me. Santana had to come out of the game in the sixth when his pitch count topped 110. Course he was no longer dominating at this point, though.
Vlad Guerrero couldn’t be kept down, he got a single. What a shock he got a hit against us. Wilkerson was big driving force to the 8-3 win, followed closely by Millwood. A good win against a good team. That’s always ALWAYS nice to see.
I was at this game. It was a great. Made better by the fact that we got to watch it from a suite out in center. A member of our church (along with two other businesses) rents one of the suites and the music department finally got our shot to go watch a game from there.
If you’ve never been under those fireworks when they go off, it WILL catch you by surprise the first time.